Bryony Lavery's play Frozen is a compelling yet flawed
examination of three people caught up in the aftermath of a serial killer's
arrest. They are the killer, the mother of one of his young victims, and
a forensic psychiatrist assigned to the case. Quite simply, the killer
and the mother are compelling, well-defined and non-stereotypical
characters, and the psychiatrist is an arch and annoying caricature who
sadly takes up at least a third of the play's nearly two-hour running
time. Director Chay Yew has staged the piece with clarity and paced it
well, and because he has cast two expert Seattle actors to carry the
roles of the killer and the mother, the Empty Space production works
well enough, though the subject matter or the play's flaws led to
several audience members departing at intermission at the performance I
attended.

It is a joy to see veteran actress Lori Larsen, so often cast as
eccentrics and dotty old ladies, here entrusted with a role requiring
strength, subtlety, irony, and pent up grief and anger. Larsen scores on
every count, and above all, makes us understand how a person like Nancy,
despite some twenty years of not knowing whether her missing daughter
was dead or alive, can find the strength to remake and move on in her
life by forgiving her daughter's murderer. If there were Seattle
Theatre awards, Ms. Larsen could easily walk away with a Best Actress
nod for this moving yet subtle performance.

As the unrepentant child killer Ralph, Peter Crook manages to be
creepy yet oddly sympathetic, the antithesis of a Hannibal Lecter style
madman. The play hypothesizes that Ralph's behavior could be the result
of physical abuse he received as a child, and Crook's Ralph makes
sense of this assertion. He and Larsen have but one scene
together, when Nancy comes to forgive Ralph, and it is played out with
subtle perfection.

Kate Wisniewski as Agnetha, the psychiatrist, is saddled with an
unlikable and virtually unplayable role, and she struggles with it in vain.
Her first scenes require her to break down and cry, before we really
have learned anything about her, and these moments earned inappropriate,
awkward laughter. When she tries to keep Nancy from meeting with Ralph,
her intentions are perhaps honorable if misguided, but it distances
the audience from her even further.

John McDermott's spare, drab and chilly unit set design works in
isolating each character (who speak mainly via monologues) in their own
separate spaces. It's a tough show to recommend, but if you go to savor
the fine work by Larsen and Crook, you won't come away disappointed.

Frozen runs through October 23 at The Empty Space, 3509 Fremont
Avenue N. For more information visit www.emptyspace.org.